New Life Church in Colorado Springs is known for its energetic worship music and its unique worship space. The main worship space, known as The Living Room, was built in 2004. The Living Room was originally configured as a hexagonal structure with a capacity of nearly 8,000 in the round. But today its current configuration is modified for a stage and video screens along one section, dropping maximum occupancy to around 5,000. Audio in The Living Room has been a challenge.
“From the outset, uniform coverage was a primary consideration,” says Technical Director Evan Duran. “With the old system you could move 10 feet to one side and hear a different tonal balance. Over the years, we had learned to work within the limitations of our old system and squeeze good performance out of it. But with what we’re stepping into now, we don’t have those limits on what we can do. And it’s not just from the standpoint of power, but also the clarity and linearity — the faithfulness to what’s happening on stage. Whatever we put into this system, that’s exactly what we hear coming out.”
Each of the five remaining sections is now uniformly covered by a dedicated array of eight Meyer Sound Lyon line array loudspeakers. “From the moment we fired up the Lyon rig, I could walk across a section, from one side to the other, from back to front, and have the exact same experience.”
To maintain precise uniformity, each array comprises four Lyon-M main loudspeakers on top for the longer throw, with four Lyon-W wide coverage models underneath for the closer seating areas. Stage front fills are 10 compact Lina loudspeakers, the smallest in the sonically cohesive Leo Family. Fifteen 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements — flown three per section in cardioid configuration — fill out the deep bass. When maximum bass impact is desired for youth events, the 1100-LFC elements can be lowered to the floor to leverage half-space coupling. System drive and optimization is handled by two Galaxy 816 Network Platforms, with comprehensive monitoring available via the RMS network.
After his first two Sundays mixing on the new system Duran says, “The difference is incredible, it almost leaves you speechless,” he says. “Over the years, we had learned to work within the limitations of our old system and squeeze good performance out of it. But with what we’re stepping into now, we don’t have those limits on what we can do. And it’s not just from the standpoint of power, but also the clarity and linearity — the faithfulness to what’s happening on stage. Whatever we put into this system, that’s exactly what we hear coming out.”
The system was supplied and installed by Second Opinion Audio, a CSD company. Daryl Porter served as lead designer and project manager, with Founder Bob Langlois contributing the MAPP 3D system modeling.
The music program at New Life Church is known for diversity as well as quality, which was another deciding factor in favor of the Meyer Sound solution, according to Duran.
“We have summer youth events with everything from screaming guitars to rap to techno, and this system will handle them all. But on Good Friday, we had a string quartet. The Lyon system replicated everything intimately, with each instrument in its own space, as if you were sitting right in front of the players, with no PA in between. To have an experience like that in a room this size is truly remarkable, and it takes some impressive technology to achieve.”
New Life Church has a membership of more than 10,000, with eight congregations meeting at multiple locations throughout the Colorado Springs area, and with services held in three languages. The church suspended in-person worship for several months in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown, with attendance gradually restored in stages to the current level of approximately 3,000.
